The Medvedev Doctrine

On Friday, Tbilisi broke diplomatic ties with Moscow in protest to statements that Russia plans to absorb South Ossetia and Abkhazia in “several years.” Moscow responded by closing its embassy in Tbilisi.

The EU also stepped up warnings against Russia by announcing it would suspend talks for a long term partnership agreement as long as there are Russian troops inside Georgia. The Russians, using something called “salami tactics,” looks to divide Europe from itself and from the US. And who are the targets of Russia’s culinary karate chop? Germany and France.

American Vice President Dick Cheney has left the building for Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine. Too bad. I as looking forward to his speech at the RNC. In Azerbaijan, Cheney looks to secure energy agreements to prevent Baku oil from going to Russia. “The U.S. is afraid that Azerbaijan will begin sending its energy resources through Russia instead of Georgia, and this question will be one of the main points of the visit,” says Vafa Guluzade, a Baku-based political analyst and former presidential adviser.

Cheney’s trip to Georgia and Ukraine are to let both nations know that the US has got their back. Or, in the words of Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, “Cheney’s mission is to stiffen [their] spine.” The Wall Street Journalsees Cheney’s trip to the region as a possible signal of a tougher American policy toward Russia. One wonders how traction said policy would get in an Administration that has four months left in power. Perhaps the $1 billion economic aid package to Georgia is a sign of commitment. Cha-ching! It just goes to show that it pays to be a proxy.

The Christian Science Monitor is looking for cracks in “Putin’s kingdom.” The CSM article is really quite a silly. First, forget the fact that Putin isn’t President anymore, yet he keeps being treated as he is. Who is really in charge can be debated to the end of time. But a few Russian policy experts disagreeing with Putin somehow means that there are “cracks in his kingdom”? Please. “The strong man has started to show his weaknesses,” writes Paul Quinn-Judge. I thought serious analysts would understand the difference between reality and the cult of personality.

The real President of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, however, is just getting started. Perhaps people should be paying more attention to him rather than Prime Minister Putin. As the interview above shows, Dima has a vision. In this vision Russia defines its own destiny, and presumably the destinies of its “near abroad.” This so-called the “Medvedev Doctrine” is predicated on five points:

International law

“Russia recognises the primacy of the basic principles of international law, which define relations between civilised nations. It is in the framework of these principles, of this concept of international law, that we will develop our relations with other states.”

Multi-polar world

“The world should be multi-polar. Unipolarity is unacceptable, domination is impermissible. We cannot accept a world order in which all decisions are taken by one country, even such a serious and authoritative country as the United States of America. This kind of world is unstable and fraught with conflict.”

No isolation

“Russia does not want confrontation with any country; Russia has no intention of isolating itself. We will develop, as far as possible, friendly relations both with Europe and with the United State of America, as well as with other countries of the world.”

Protect citizens

“Our unquestionable priority is to protect the life and dignity of our citizens, wherever they are. We will also proceed from this in pursuing our foreign policy. We will also protect the interest of our business community abroad. And it should be clear to everyone that if someone makes aggressive forays, he will get a response.”

Spheres of influence

“Russia, just like other countries in the world, has regions where it has its privileged interests. In these regions, there are countries with which we have traditionally had friendly cordial relations, historically special relations. We will work very attentively in these regions and develop these friendly relations with these states, with our close neighbors.”

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There are a few new develops concerning the aftermath of the war. Georgia has admitted using cluster bombs in a letter to Human Rights Watch. The letter emphasized that the bombs “were never used against civilians, civilian targets and civilian populated or nearby areas.” But they whole thing with cluster bombs is not when they were used. The problem is with the unexploded bomblets left after their use.

The ammunition in question is of Israeli origin and was used by the Georgian military. The Georgian Ministry of Defense has now admitted as much. HRW now also acknowledges this in a new press statement. But it continues to claim Russian use of such weapons. It does so by pointing to its own older reports which clearly misidentified Georgian cluster ammunition as Russian made. HRW has still to show any proof for its continuing accusations against the Russian Federation.

Georgia has released casualty figures for the war. There were 169 soldiers and 69 civilians killed. And what of the figures deaths at the hands of marauding Ossetian militiamen? After all, cleansing is messy business.

Finally, I direct your attention to Tony Wood’s “What Condoleezza Said” in the London Review of Books. The article is for subscribers only but I know that JRL carried it today. I found this passage about the rapid increase of Georgia’s military budget deserving of more discussion.

The arrival of Saakashvili changed the picture considerably. His push for Nato membership, and the funds and equipment supplied by Washington, gave military substance to his determination to regain control of the two territories. Georgia’s military spending went from $84m in 2004 to $339m in 2006; in July 2008, the Georgian parliament approved a budget which raised it to $1bn. Since 2004, Saakashvili has alternated between conciliatory offers of autonomy within Georgia and implicit threats to resolve the situation by force. The Ossetians were offered autonomy in 2005, but rejected it, and in 2006 voted for independence in a referendum Tbilisi did not recognise. Instead, in spring 2007 Saakashvili set up a parallel pro-Georgian government in South Ossetia – copying the Kremlin’s policy in Chechnya in 1995 and 1999. Retaking either territory by force, however, was still militarily unfeasible.

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Max Weber defined a state by its power to uphold its “claim on the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force.” The fledgling Ukrainian state’s ability to maintain its monopoly on violence is quickly disintegrating as militant separatists, volunteer militias, oligarch backed paramilitary groups, and criminal gangs fight to control the streets of its southern and eastern cities. Ukraine is on the verge of becoming a failed state. The expansion of these forces, on both sides of the conflict, is a disturbing trend. They undermine any political solution to the crisis and gives prominence to armed radicals ready to solve disputes through the barrel of a gun. But peel back the veneer and the emerging Ukrainian civil war looks more like a gang war between competing oligarchs.

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The Ossetians are slowly creeping into view, though the articles highlighting their history, plight, and desire for self-determination are still relegated to the journalistic periphery. One article to recenter the Ossetian (and also Abkhaz) problem is Donald Rayfield’s “The Georgia-Russia conflict: lost territory, found nation” on OpenDemocracy.net. Rayfield opens with a point that I made a few days ago. Namely,

Much of the media reporting of the “short and nasty war” has been strong and detailed, with a good dose of scepticism in questioning the tendentious (and often downright mendacious) versions of events relayed by Russian and Georgians spokespersons alike. This is in contrast to the lack of attention among commentators to the essential task of exploring the roots of the conflict; indeed, a lot of the opinion-flood persists in ignoring completely the local and regional factors in favour of an instant resort to high geopolitics, as if South Ossetia and Abkhazia – which lie at the heart of what has happened – do not in themselves even exist. [Emphasis mine]

When the Ossetians and Abkhazians at the center, the answer to the problem is clear: recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s right of self-determination, whether that be independence or integration into Russia.

To get there, however, Rayfield suggests that the Georgians come to grip with the idea that losing South Ossetia and Abkhazia are not the end of the world.

Sadly, rationality and nationalism rarely mix well. When he came to power in 2003, Saakashvili put taming Georgia’s separatist regions at the center of his populist nationalism. It didn’t take him long to begin putting pressure on both Ossetia and Akhazia to comply. Under the auspicious of “decriminalizing” both regions of smuggling, corruption, and gang-like rule, Saakashvili ordered his navy to down all foreign ships (i.e. Russian) heading for Abkhazia and replaced his border police with US-trained Georgian troops, who quickly began trading small arms fire with Ossetian militias. As the New York Times‘ C. J. Chivers noted in August 2004, critics were already saying that Saakashvili’s antics were “showing his inexperience and flirting with war.” One wonders where such criticism in the Western press is now.

At the root of this conflict is a clash of two twentieth-century guiding principles in international relations. Georgia, backed by the West, is claiming its right as a sovereign nation to control the territory within its borders, a guiding principle since World War II. The Ossetians are claiming their right to self-determination, a guiding principle since World War I.

These two guiding concepts for international relations–national sovereignty and the right to self-determination–are locked in a zero-sum battle in Georgia. Sometimes, the West takes the side of national sovereignty, as it is in the current war; other times, it sides with self-determination and redrawing of national borders, such as with Kosovo.

In that 1999 war, the United States led a nearly three-month bombing campaign of Serbia in order to rescue a beleaguered minority, the Albanians, and carve out a new nation. Self-determination trumped national sovereignty, over the objections of Russia, China and numerous other countries.

Why, Russians and Ossetians (not to mention separatist Abkhazians in Georgia’s western region) ask, should the same principle not be applied to them?

It should but it’s not. What the Ossentians, Abkhazians and Russians have gotten in response is the worse chest pounding, slander, and great power blustering from the United States. The best example of this is Bush’s feeble attempt at continued relevancy by spouting tired rhetoric about how “Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.” “Only Russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations or continue to pursue a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation,” he continued. Russia’s response? Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said the Americans had to chose between have a “real partnership” with Russia or a virtual one with Georgia.

The funny thing is that so much of this conflict has simply existed on the virtual plane. How people saw the war was skillfully crafted by their specific culture industry. Each side, whether it be the Russian or the Western press created its own villains, victims, historical parallels, and defense of grand historical ideas. The South Ossetian war was as much, if not more, about narrative than it was about bullets and bombs. The universal opinion is that Russia lost this war of narratives. Yasha Levine put it best in his analysis on the Exiled.

Even the most cursory look at this conflict shows that Georgia’s attack was an almost perfect textbook example of how modern warfare should be fought on the information front. The Georgians showed an amazing grasp of Info Ops concepts, pulling off counterpropaganda, launching disinformation campaigns and manipulating media perceptions as if they did this type of thing every day.

Oh, the Russians tried to do their part, too. But it still isn’t clear if they didn’t give a shit about what the world thought or just failed miserably. Either way, it was bad news for the Kremlin. Despite a military victory, they are going to have a heard time getting the world to go along with their plans for post-war Georgia. All because they failed to win over the hearts and minds of the world community. The Georgians knew the importance of a well-defined information war strategy. That’s because Georgia has had ample training by the masters of this art: America and Israel.

Saakashvili turned out to be a master at manipulating American narcissism. Perhaps his time at Columbia Law School taught him that Americans only react to codes. For example, in his “exclusive” interview with CNN on August 8, Saakashvili repeatedly said he loved freedom and democracy:

“We are right now suffering because we want to be free and we want to be a democracy multi-ethnic democracy that belongs to all ethnic groups and that’s exactly what’s happening there. So, basically, I have to – I mean, it’s not about Georgia anymore, it’s about America, its values. You know, I went to two U.S. universities. I always taught that these values were also those of my own. We have held them not because we love America although I do love America, but because we love freedom. And the point here is that I also taught that America also stands up for those free-loving nations and supports them.”

“We are a freedom-loving nation that is right now under attack.”

His 13 August interview on CNN, he laid the freedom on even thicker. He said the word “free” or “freedom” seven times. He also dropped “democracy” seven times. Perhaps this is why people like CNN’s Glenn Beck are so apt to believe after talking with Saakashvili for 30 minutes that “This is for America. This is for NATO. This is for Bush” was written on the Russian bombs falling on Georgia. Beck is an utter boob. And Saakashvili, well, he should get a fucking Oscar.

One can tell how effective freedom and democracy rhetoric is just by looking how American politicians deploy it themselves. If you can make the conflict about America, its people, and its values, the public will respond. This is why John McCain told a crowd in Pennsylvania that “Today, we are all Georgians.” This is why In Colorado, he said that he wanted to avoid any armed conflict with Russia, “but,” he emphasized, “we have to stand up for freedom and democracy as we did in the darkest days.”

McCain’s blustering has paid off politically. The New York Times, in an application of the “Rolled up sleeves theory,” noted that McCain displayed his “foreign policy credentials,” while Barack Obama “seemed to fade from the scene while on his secluded vacation.” Now American liberals are scrambling out of fear that McCain’s get tough on Russia stance will give him a bump in the polls.

But the narcissism on display is not simply relegated to Bush, McCain, or the American voter as such. American liberals, who pride themselves on seeing through the smoke and mirrors of the propaganda state, are no less myopic. Once upon a time, national self-determination was a principle of the American liberal left. National liberation movements were mark of internationalism and solidarity.

Now those days are long gone and anti-imperialism has faded from the American liberal doxa. Now, they are probably the most egregiously narcissistic bunch that are so steeped in their own “it’s all about me” mentality. They call for the better management of empire rather than its ultimate dismantle. But what do you expect from liberalism? The South Ossetian War can’t be about well, the Ossetians and the Abkhazians (Who are they anyway?). Their struggles, desires, and agency doesn’t just has to, they must be a metynom for a much wider issue: American hegemony? Oil? Iran? McCain-Obama? Make your pick. Because, if the South Ossetians and Abkhazians can’t be molded into a reflection of one of a liberal cause, they might as well not exist. To not do this would require American liberals to actually realize that there is a world out there that isn’t a simple reflection of their values and concerns.

Instead, the South Ossetian and Abkhazian right of self-determination is erased in favor of some grand scheme of American Empire. Take for example, the Nation‘s Robert Sheer’s speculation that the Georgian War was some kind of neocon conspiracy, an October Surprise to influence the American Presidential Election. The logic is beautiful in its simplicity. Randy Scheunemann is McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser. He previously served as a lobbyist for the Georgian government. Scheunemann is also a neocon who championed the invasion of Iraq. Connect the dots people. Sheer does

There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which clearly was expected to produce a Russian counter-reaction. It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back.

Why did the US want a Russian counteraction? American needs a new enemy. A good enemy. Not one that hides in caves, blows himself up, and wreaks havoc in failed states with no targets. There’s nothing photogenic in all that. Perhaps this is why all the war on terror films have fallen so flat in the box office. Perhaps this is why there is no Rambo for this war. Even liberals need a simple, flat binaried world of “us” and “US” to make their unfettered political way in an otherwise complex world.

So for Sheer, the Georgia Crisis has been about us from the very get go. Or if you listen to Michael Klare, it’s “South Ossetia: It’s the oil, stupid.” Or if you really want a duesy, read Frank Shaeffer, who says that Russia actions in Georgia “is the slow-motion counterattack of the Orthodox world against the West’s latest crusade. Georgia is just a symbol for the counter-punch to the modern version of the West’s sack of Constantinople in 1204.” What? He’s kidding right? The fact that Georgia is also an Orthodox country (he admits this) doesn’t seem to matter.

Clearly, South Ossetian and Abkhazian bodies don’t matter unless they are used as canvas for sketching out larger and more sinister political designs. Someone should have done the decent thing and sent them the memo. No matter, the cultural industry and its managers will write them in as necessary. Or not.

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As Duma and presidential elections approach in Russia, the Kremlin and its supporters like Nashi have amplified their charges that the United States is funding Russian opposition movements.In his 26 April “Annual Address to the Federal Assembly,” Putin added his own take about the increased influx of foreign money into Russia’s political system. “There has been an increasing influx of money from abroad being used to intervene directly in our internal affairs,” he stated. “Looking back at the more distant past, we recall the talk about the civilizing role of colonial powers during the colonial era. Today, ‘civilization’ has been replaced by democratization, but the aim is the same – to ensure unilateral gains and one’s own advantage, and to pursue one’s own interests.”

Given Putin’s own democratic record many have panned his analysis as just another means to justify his authoritarianism.The logic is simple: discredit the opposition by linking it to larger Western, particularly American, machinations at world domination.After all, Western NGO support of opposition movements in Ukraine and Georgia are often cited as crucial factors in those countries “colored revolutions.”The thing is whether one wants to believe him or not, Putin does have a point.

The truth is, as Putin states, American rhetoric about “spreading democracy” is a resounding echo of imperialist powers’ “civilizing mission in the 19th century. Just compare the following quotes;

In carrying out this work of civilization we are fulfilling what I believe to be our national mission, and we are finding scope for the exercise of those faculties and qualities which have made of us a great governing race.”—British Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain in a speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Colonial Institute, March 1897.

From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.—President George W. Bush, Inaugural Address, January, 2005.

Only the most na?ve would believe that the spread of “civilization” by the British was and “democracy” by the US is altruistic.Global hegemony is not waged by force alone.As the Cold War proved, ideology is also major weapon.In addition, as Putin well knows, since 1991, post-Soviet space has been one of the focuses for the US’ strategy of “spreading democracy” and “assisting” democratic movements.However, unlike during the Cold War, as Gerald Sussman has argued in the Monthly Review, the State Department relies less on the CIA and more on both public and private organizations.Allen Weinstein, one of the founders of the National Endowment for Democracy, noted: “A lot of what we [NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

Russians got a taste of American meddling in the 1996 Russian Presidential elections.Then a barely surviving Yeltsin defeated KPRF candidate Gennady Zyuganov through a combination of theft, voter manipulation, scare tactics, and funds from the International Monetary Fund and the American, German, and French governments.And while Putin’s political career has certainly benefited from Yeltsin’s victory, now that he’s vilified in the West, there is no doubt in Putin’s mind that foreign governments will attempt to exercise influence over who will be his successor.

The question is how much and what kind of “assistance” the US government is giving.Moscow’s claims of foreign governments’ meddling have sparked some digging.Writing in a recent article in the Moscow Times, Nabi Abdullaev states that the Kremlin’s accusations are purely to whip up “hysteria.” An analysis of US funding conducted by the Moscow Times found that “for the past four years . . . Washington seems to have given up trying to effect democratization in any significant way, steadily cutting its spending to pennies of what would be needed to foster a change in government.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent $84.27 million in Russia in 2006 but only $60.97 million is allocated for this year (a breakdown of USAID’s 2007 budget for Russia can be found here). This is compared to the $94 million the agency spent in 2004.The decrease of funding for Russia has prompted the NGO Freedom House to recommend in their recent report “Supporting Freedom’s Advocates?” that the Bush Administration restore the $25 million it struck from the 2007 Budget for “civil society” and the $3 million for “human rights.” In a recent interview with RFE/RL, Amanda Abrams, Freedom House’s director of communications, said that “We’re seen an increase in democracy funding around the world, which is great, and we’re also seeing increases in certain regions, but the former Soviet Union isn’t one of the regions that’s really receiving an increase, I’d say, generally speaking.”

However, when the figures are looked at closely, there is an ample increase in the percentage within the budget for democratic assistance programs.And it’s no coincidence that this has occurred on the eve of the Russia’s two big elections.“Combined spending on democracy and governance has grown from 41 percent of the total budget in 2004 to 72 percent this year,” Abdullaev writes.It is also telling that in 2004 and 2005 no money was in the USAID Russia budget for “Strengthening Democracy,” while the 2006 and 2007 budgets saw $3.1 million and $2 million respectively to “Strengthen Democratic Political Parties.”According to USAID’s data sheet, strengthening democratic parties means:

How or who USAID defines as “democratically-oriented parties” isn’t stated.Yet, despite the explicit statement about helping intensifying coalition building efforts for the 2007-2008 elections, the Moscow Times maintains that USAID programs are hardly threatening.Most of them focus on “judge exchange programs, leadership lectures by local professors, finance classes for regional officials, and journalist training.”

Moreover, USAID repeatedly claims that their funding is “non-partisan” and doesn’t go to any political parties in particular, but to strengthening the “democratic process.”This has allowed some unlikely groups to benefit.Not only have activists from Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces attended USAID funded training seminars, lectures, and conferences, so have activists from United Russia, its youth organization Young Guard, and Nashi.All three groups have taken advantage of US funds despite their vehemence about US meddling.When asked about this, spokespeople from both Nashi and Young Guard stated that they were not in control of what their individual members did.And though Nadezhda Orlova, Young Guard’s coordinator for political training programs, thought “it reprehensible to participate in U.S.-financed training sessions after we have accused The Other Russia of taking money from Washington and turning into American puppets,” she herself admitted to accepting a US government grant to study public relations at the University of North Carolina.

Whether any of these US funded programs actually have any influence over politics is difficult to access.Yabloko youth leader Ilya Yashin told the Moscow Times that the seminars were “dull stuff” anyway, adding that “We know the situation on the ground better than any Western expert.”

Still, even if NGOs flooded Russian opposition parties with cash, few think that it would make any real difference.As Gleb Pavlovsky, former editor of the Russian edition of the Journal of Democracyin the 1990s, (JoD Russia was published by the US Congress and funded by the National Endowment of Democracy), told the Times, “U.S. money in Russia is not enough to unhorse Putin” anyway. Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told the Financial Times the same last month.“The economic and political situation in Russia today is very stable. There could be attempts, but this will be money thrown into the wind. It will be spent in vain. There will be no dividends” he said. The one thing that made “democratic assistance” a success in Ukraine and Georgia was that social discontent with the ruling governments was already present.With a 70% approval rating, such mass discontent doesn’t exist in Russia, regardless of what Other Russia signifies (I should note that the April issue of the Journal of Democracy has an article by none other than Garry Kasparov titled, “Battling KGB Inc.” as well as other articles critical of Russian democracy.)The only thing is, if all this is true and figures like Ivanov are exuding such confidence, then why the crackdown on such a weak and insignificant opposition?

The issue might just be less about opposition parties and more about sovereignty.Also in his interview with FT, Ivanov stated that “when the [US] state department publicly says, “We will disburse money to NGOs,” this is practically interference in our internal affairs.”And while western governments lambaste Russia for restricting NGOs, it is not like any Russian money would be tolerated in their countries.As Ivanov told FT in response to whether Russia could fund NGOs in the United States,

No it can’t, because of the laws of the US. We haven’t been able to open a radio station there for the last ten years. They won’t let us. Mayak, I think, wanted to. But their laws won’t allow us, or any broadcasts by foreign media. And I know the laws of France on NGOs, there is such a big tax – almost 80 percent of funds transferred for fighting diseases, for humanitarian purposes. And there’s a check every month on whether it is being used properly. If just one centime did not go towards buying medicine then it is immediately closed. We have normal laws. They are democratic laws. But when [foreigners] begin to finance the political process – imagine if foreign capital financed any US political party, or in Britain, how this would be seen. You would say you don’t like this. And we don’t like it either.

Ivanov words essentially echo most Russians’ complaint about the US and Europe rhetoric about Russian “democracy”: hypocrisy.For centuries, the West has claimed it was spreading “civilization” to the dark masses.The result was to the detriment of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.The current prevalence in the West to speak about democracy and freedom, to borrow a phrase from Homi Bhabha, “in a tongue that is forked, not false” is what makes its efforts so disingenuous, not their supposed results.